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Plan To Complete Oklahoma Indian Museum Languishing

Plan To Complete Oklahoma Indian Museum Languishing

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO / The site of the American Indian Cultural Center sits in the shadow of Oklahoma City in April 2008. Nearly two decades after the idea was proposed to build the center and seven years after the land was blessed by tribes and construction started, the $170 million American Indian Cultural Center and Museum sits half-finished along Interstates 35 and 40.

Plan To Complete Oklahoma Indian Museum Languishing

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO / The American Indian Cultural Center and Museum, under construction, is pictured in Oklahoma City in May 2011.

Plan To Complete Oklahoma Indian Museum Languishing

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO / The beginnings of the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum in Oklahoma City is seen in May 2011.

The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY — Gov. Mary Fallin’s chief budget negotiator says a plan to spend $40 million to complete an unfinished Indian museum near downtown Oklahoma City is apparently dead for this session.

Secretary of Finance Preston Doerflinger said Friday the proposal “is dead for now.”

The Senate passed a bill to take $40 million from the state’s Unclaimed Property Fund to match another $40 million in pledges to complete the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum. But many Republican members in the House bitterly opposed the project, and new House Speaker Jeff Hickman said he wouldn’t present the bill on the floor until at least 51 of the House’s 72 Republicans supported it.

Lawmakers must adjourn by May 30.

More than $95 million already has been spent on the unfinished project.